writing

This post was sup­posed to be a steam­punk short sto­ry called The Gold­en Bird. The Gold­en Bird was sup­posed to be my con­tri­bu­tion to the Steam­punk Hands Around the World ini­tia­tive to show­case the art(s) of steam­punk on a world­wide are­na via the web. Obvi­ous­ly that is not what this is.

My short, The Gold­en Bird turned out to be not very short. Sev­er­al thou­sand words in, I real­ized that my beloved sto­ry was turn­ing into a novel­la length work. When this became clear to me, I decid­ed to put the breaks on it, because I am cur­rent­ly embroiled in a larg­er long term piece of writ­ing, and unlike many of my writer­ly friends, I am com­plete­ly inca­pable of divid­ing my time and ener­gies between two large pieces. I can’t. It stunts my cre­ative juices and it steals my time, which is in very, very short sup­ply.

Since I’m not pre­pared to post The Gold­en Bird quite yet, I thought I’d share the begin­ning sketch­es of the pic­ture that will even­tu­al­ly be the cov­er of the novel­la.

Emi­ra Amin by The Artist

This post has instead become my per­son­al trib­ute to STEAMPUNK.

steam∙punk – a genre of science fiction and or fantasy that typically features steam powered machinery rather than advance technology.

Steam­punk has become an espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar art form with­in the last 20–25 years, but it has been around for much longer than that. Some of the first prog­en­i­tors of steam­punk are names we know very well from lit­er­a­ture such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Steam­punk is usu­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able via cer­tain tropes and props such as googles, brass work, clock­work mech­a­nisms, air­ships, trains, machines pow­ered by steam or mag­ic or both, bus­tles and boots, pock­et watch­es and gun hol­sters, buck­les, tele­scopes and com­pass­es. Can you see it? I can, because in a sin­gle yet inad­e­quate word, steam­punk is beau­ti­ful.

When I first heard of steam­punk, not many years ago, I was shocked to real­ize that I had been enjoy­ing the art form, pri­vate­ly dig­ging on the beau­ty and artistry of it, with­out real­iz­ing it for many years. And even now, when I feel as if I have a pret­ty good under­stand­ing of what steam­punk is, I keep get­ting slapped in the face with the fact that there remain con­tri­bu­tions to this genre that I have enjoyed with­out once giv­ing a thought to the fact that they are con­sid­ered works of steam­punk.

Just today as I was perus­ing a list of steam­punk lit­er­a­ture com­piled on Goodreads, I saw a much loved sto­ry that I nev­er real­ized is con­sid­ered steam­punk. Full­met­al Alchemist Broth­er­hood. And now that I know, I can see it. It’s the met­al work, the indus­tri­al feel, and the mag­ic so embed­ded in the nar­ra­tive that it feels “nor­mal”. Full­met­al Alchemist Broth­er­hood is the sec­ond ani­me series that I ever watched and it remains at the top of my list of favorites and most mem­o­rable. Oth­er steam­punk manga/anime include the very obvi­ous Steam­boy, Metrop­o­lis, and Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, and the more sub­tly steam fla­vored, sort of new and insane­ly pop­u­lar Attack on Titan and Bac­cano!.

The Emperor’s Edge series by Lind­say Buro­ker is one of my favorite books series for its fun sto­ry­line, quirky char­ac­ters, inter­est­ing per­ils and of course, its seam­less­ly woven ele­ments of steam that include mag­ic, weird steam pow­ered con­structs, trains and sub­marines among oth­er things. I also love how Lind­say Buro­ker throws out the occa­sion­al bit of odd word usage, neces­si­tat­ing the use of my dic­tio­nary and there­by mak­ing me a smarter more well-round­ed per­son and writer… but that’s anoth­er sto­ry alto­geth­er. But this lyri­cal mixed peri­od use of ver­biage is also com­mon with steam­punk, as it is a genre that feels caught between many time peri­ods.

steam∙punk – a subgenre of speculative fiction, usually set in the anachronistic Victorian or quasi Victorian alternate history setting.

Per­di­do Street Sta­tion by Chi­na Mieville is anoth­er book that I real­ly enjoyed, for alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent rea­sons than the EE series. This is one of those books that I read with­out being con­scious that it was a steam­punk ren­der­ing. But of course, it is. PSS is like a uhm… triple dark choco­late cook­ie served with a mocha lat­te. Deli­cious, but best if eat­en slow­ly and in small quan­ti­ties. Or like a train wreck, it’s hard to look at but you’re com­pelled by some sick part of your psy­che to watch. None of that is to say I didn’t love PSS, because I did, even more now over a year lat­er, but it’s a heavy piece of writ­ing, to say the least. Which is like­ly why it didn’t ini­tial­ly dawn on me that this was steam­punk. There was so much oth­er stuff hap­pen­ing that I was on over­load.

Here are some oth­er steam pow­ered books that I’ve either read or own and have yet to read: The Gold­en Com­pass: His Dark Mate­ri­als, Flash Gold, The Time Machine, Bone­shak­er, Leviathan, Un Lun Dun, The Alche­my of Stone, Lady of Devices, and as they say, the list goes on.

My favorite steam fla­vored film has to be The Pres­tige. That was a scary smart movie about magi­cian friends turned rivals and ene­mies. The term steam fla­vored per­fect­ly describes this one because ele­ments of steam are quite sub­tle here as they appear to be more about time and place, which is indus­tri­al era Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don than about mag­i­cal gad­getry, although there is tons of mag­ic. Hugo is an obvi­ous and beau­ti­ful steam­punk film. This movie is all about gad­gets and trains and automa­tons. The real­ly mag­i­cal ele­ment is the sto­ry­telling itself.

steam∙punk – a rising subgenre, culture and movement…

What all of these forms of steam­punk art have in com­mon is stun­ning imagery, genius lev­el cre­ativ­i­ty, a will­ing­ness to rewrite his­to­ry, stretch and erupt bound­aries, and the knack for posit­ing the age old ques­tion of “What if?”. I love steam­punk because it is brave. It doesn’t care about con­ven­tion or genre expec­ta­tions. It says “absolute­ly any­thing goes”.

All of this is why Kevin Steil’s idea, Steam­punk Hands Around the World, is so bril­liant. This inclu­sive world­wide endeav­or encour­ages diver­si­ty of peo­ple and thought just as steam­punk does. Peo­ple from all over the world are par­tic­i­pat­ing and I am immense­ly proud to have been invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate and I hope you con­tin­ue the tour when you leave my site!

I’m hap­py to have Ale­sha Esco­bar, author of The Gray Tow­er Tril­o­gy, back on my site. She is tour­ing with the Addict­ed to Hero­ines Blog Tour (see the love­ly badge in the mar­gin) so I encour­age you to take a gan­der and see who else is involved. This time Ale­sha tells us about the qual­i­ties of a lik­able hero­ine, and as usu­al, she’s got it spot on. Thanks Ale­sha for stop­ping by again!

Do you remem­ber the news sto­ry about women get­ting depressed using Face­book? Appar­ent­ly some women would read up on oth­ers’ sta­tus updates filled with on-point hair days, per­fect chil­dren, glam­orous jobs, and unicorns–and log off feel­ing like crap.

I’m not sur­prised.

It’s inevitable to com­pare our­selves to oth­ers, and when we feel that a cer­tain sta­tus or behav­ior is unat­tain­able, it leaves us feel­ing some­thing is lack­ing, or that we are lack­ing. The same goes for our fic­tion­al heroines–when we see the per­fect Mary Sue, we sort of cringe and fail to relate. We’re not per­fect, and when we pick up a book, we don’t want to encounter a hero­ine who’s going to get every­thing right all the time. Yet, I’m hes­i­tant to throw in my tow­el and pro­claim we need to start writ­ing and read­ing crude, “unlik­able” female heroes.

The idea of the lik­able hero­ine is one that rests on the expec­ta­tion that a hero­ine be appro­pri­ate in her behav­ior, sweet, nice, or “the good girl.” She has to be likable…right? There’s no room to be depressed, self­ish, a user, or a bitch.

For those who cri­tique the “lik­able hero­ine” being placed on a pedestal, I agree with them that there’s a prob­lem with this. Women are com­plex human beings, and we run the range of lik­able to unlik­able. Why can’t our hero­ines reflect the same?

Still, a female ver­sion of a jerk anti-hero isn’t all too palat­able either. So let’s strike some mid­dle ground. It’s okay for our hero­ines to be “real,” to have flaws, and make mis­takes. And it’s also okay for her to be noble, brave, and–gasp–kind.

We like hero­ines we can relate to, but many of us also like them to be the torch­bear­ers of real­ly cool qual­i­ties and per­son­al­i­ty traits. At least that’s what attracts me to a hero­ine. Give me the intel­li­gent Eliz­a­beth Ben­nets who find love, the Eowyns who refuse to be caged, or the fierce Brit­o­marts who hold their heads high.

If I could be a hero­ine, I’d want to pos­sess some of these traits. So what’s wrong with being nice or lik­able? Noth­ing at all. Just remem­ber that there are deep­er lay­ers, desires, and qual­i­ties to the lik­able hero­ine, and instead of rest­ing on sim­ply one aspect, try explor­ing the whole per­son.

What I like is the fact that many peo­ple like and even love steam­punk and they don’t even know it. That would have been me a few years ago. I’d watched steam­punk inspired movies and ani­ma­tion, total­ly dig­ging the spiff and shine, the gad­getry and mag­ic, and the mash up of gen­res, tropes and imagery to cre­ate some­thing, well…unnameable. Except it does have a name. Steam­punk.

Until three weeks ago I nev­er thought for a sec­ond that I would do more than read a steam­punk book or watch a movie. This will soon change.

Steam­punk Hands Around the World is the brain child of the Air­ship Ambas­sador, Kevin Steil. I was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate by group mem­ber, Suna Dasi, who had put out a call to attract a mul­ti­cul­tur­al group of women to par­tic­i­pate in this quirky, fun event. I am so very glad that I accept­ed. The Mis­sion State­ment reads as such:

Steam­punk Hands Around the World is a month long event in Feb­ru­ary 2014 show­ing and shar­ing that steam­punk and the com­mu­ni­ty is glob­al and as such, all steam­punk every­where are con­nect­ed. There are new friend­ships to be found in every con­ver­sa­tion and event. “Hands” is pre­sent­ed in mul­ti­ple for­mats from blogs to videos to live events. Each per­son is respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing their own con­tent and for­mat, but the cen­tral theme is that of glob­al con­nec­tion and friend­ship.

While con­tri­bu­tions to this event will be unique and var­ied, by an equal­ly unique and var­ied group of artists and steam­punk lovers, my part will be a short sto­ry ten­ta­tive­ly titled The Gold­en Bird. In keep­ing with the theme of this event, it will of course, be a steam­punk tale and it will be mul­ti­cul­tur­al. I’ll be post­ing it right here on Feb­ru­ary 23rd. And, if all goes as planned, The Artist will pro­vide a unique piece of art to go along with my sto­ry. I am both excit­ed and ner­vous because this puts me on a dead­line. *shud­ders*